Jill Hazelbaker, the young Oregonian who was communications director for John McCain's presidential campaign, is now joining the political "dream team" of consultants helping New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in his race for re-election.

Special to The Oregonian/Bill PutnamJill Hazelbaker and Tucker Bounds as seen at McCain headquarters last summer.

Hazelbaker, sharp-eyed readers of The Oregonian may recall, was one-half of the "dynamic Duck duo" that I wrote about for the newspaper at the start of the Republican convention last year.

While Hazelbaker helped shape communications strategy, one of her top aides was another young Oregonian, Tucker Bounds, who often served as the campaign's TV spokesman. In fact, if you watched a lot of cable TV news during the presidential race, Bounds was hard to miss.

Since the election, Hazelbaker has been staying with her parents in Salem and getting in a lot of skiing. Her gig with Bloomberg is another interesting career twist for someone who has risen through the Republican campaign ranks.

Bloomberg, of course, is the billionaire who turned from Democrat to Republican to run for mayor and then to independent while he considered running for president last year.

After rejecting that option, Bloomberg got the city's term-limits law changed and is now seeking a third mayoral term while running as a Republican (New York city holds off-year elections. The primary will be in September of this year, followed by the general election in November). His large stable of consultants includes several Democrats as well as an aide to former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Hazelbaker will work for Howard Wolfson, the longtime spokesman for Hillary Clinton in both her Senate campaigns and her race for the presidency. Hazelbaker is suitably effusive about Democrat Wolfson.

"Howard is someone I've admired for a long time," she told me. "He's very smart and savvy...It's a very special opportunity that doesn't come along very often to be able to work with someone from the other side of the aisle."

If nothing else, it should be a pretty fun way to spend an off-election year while the country happens to be in deep recession. Bloomberg self-finances lavish campaigns (he spent $74 million on his 2001 race and $78 million on his re-election effort) and his consultants do quite well by him. They become accustomed to nice hotels, invites to Bloomberg's high society parties and hefty bonuses at the end of a winning campaign, according to The New York Times.

Bounds, who grew up in Hermiston, hasn't found the same deep pockets after the McCain campaign. But he's exploring job possibilities in Oregon, recently got engaged and will be one of the main speakers at the Dorchester Conference for Republicans next month. In short, the dynamic Duck duo are doing well.